Boy, If Only Life Worked Like This

Josh Marshall gets this right, it was an Alvy Singer bringing out Marshall McLuhan at the cinema moment:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 “wise Latina” speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

“So I would just say to you, I believe in Judge Cedarbaum’s formulation,” Sessions told Sotomayor.

“My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions’ apparent surprise. “We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts.”

Cedarbaum agreed.

“I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no effect on her approach to judging,” she told Washington Wire. “We’d both like to see more women on the courts,” she added.

Sessions was clearly flustered by this, causing his lobster bib to flap full into his face and almost tip over his ten-gallon hat.

Perhaps the best part of this is that Judge Cedarbarum and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III were nominated by Ronald Reagan for the federal bench in the same year, 1986, but Sessions didn't make it as far as Cedarbaum, because of "a controversy surrounding comments he made involving the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP."

This won't stop the silliness, but it was an amusing moment to distract us from, for example, Lindsey Graham comparing the "wise Latina" comment to sectarian violence and repression in Iraq.